Question for the boomers: what was it like to live through major improvements in audio fidelity?

[Robin L]

. . . The only thing I would say is that "popular" music has suffered, in my opinion.

Maybe part of it is my lack of ingesting trendy chemical amusement aids, or not hanging with people listening to it, who knows.

Maybe that's just how it works as you age, but I'd likely be unable to identify anything on the Pop Charts from at least the last 20, or maybe 30 years.

I don't remember anyone asking me "Have you heard (whatever)" over multiple decades, not including my single Audio Buddy, of course, with whom I tend to share likes and dislikes.

The most recent tune (on the radio, WMNF) that caught my ear was an Elton John cover, by Fireside Collective. Not that I really like the original tune, but it's listenable in its original form, and I like the way these guys presented it.

Pop Music is still popular, of course, maybe by definition, just not so much with me.

I'll side with Rick. Here's what he considers the "The Most Complex Pop song of all Time". I like music where I have trouble guessing what the next notes will be. If I can guess, it's more like I've already heard it, and move on.

I tend to think that's just how it works as you age. Music is always a reflection of the moment of its creation. A lot of what I hear these days that's new sounds technologically stressed via tools like Autotune, and computer programed repetitive looping rhythms. I suspect that might be a fair description of the emotions of young musicians - technologically stressed. But I almost always listen to old or dead musicians (a big fan of standard repertoire classics) so I tend to dodge that sort of emotional stress. Everybody's going to dance to the rhythms of their times, everybody who's still dancing anyway.

 

[Audionaut]

The bit rate may be higher, but I question whether the quality is better. As Red Book is already fully transparent, how can a higher bit rate be better? It just takes up more space.

You said that streaming compresses data more than CD does.
I replied that the data rate is better with many streaming providers.
Regarding quality: A SINAD of 80 is transparent, but one of 120 is still better, right?
Whether you or I can still hear it is irrelevant for the time being.

 

[sergeauckland]

You said that streaming compresses data more than CD does.
I replied that the data rate is better with many streaming providers.
Regarding quality: A SINAD of 80 is transparent, but one of 120 is still better, right?
Whether you or I can still hear it is irrelevant for the time being.

Define better! 120 is a bigger number than 80, but confers no additional benefit, so how is it better? Is bigger better?

S

 

[Audionaut]

Define better! 120 is a bigger number than 80, but confers no additional benefit, so how is it better? Is bigger better?

I think it's pointless to discuss this, because it's the difference between better and useful.
Do you need better data, higher Sinad, more power or is it completely sufficient if all components exceed the transparency threshold by 1db?
I think that's a question that only everyone can answer for themselves.

Abstracting from this, it is common to describe something with better values as better. I don't know how I could formulate it differently.

 

[DWPress]

Going from LPs to streaming platforms where I can listen to the exact song I want anywhere on my property, car or planet anytime I want is pretty amazing.

 

[MattHooper]

The change to CDs was obviously huge. Re-buying all the music you loved on CD and all that.

But as somebody who has worked in POST PRODUCTION sound for eons, for me, maybe the biggest change was moving from the analogue age to the digital age.

That goes both for when I started in picture editing/assisting, well as when I started working in sound during the analogue age.

Film and tape were just massive hassles to work with.

Thinking back on all those times when I would be winding four or more big reels of 35mm mag through a synchronizer, and one of them pops out in the middle, having to reset everything. The amount of stages everything had to go through.

It feels medieval looking back on it.

I may have enjoyed getting back into records as an audiophile, for my work I am extremely happy to be working with DAWs (despite some frustrations) and I don’t look back on the analogue work with much romance.

 

[Anton S]

Yes, the advent of the CD player was pivotal, because it was sooo much cleaner than anything that had come before. And the fact that a CD could be played hundreds - even thousands - of times without any degradation to its fidelity was the icing on the cake.

Another significant audio development, one that enjoyed far less fanfare than the CD, has been the transition of speaker manufacturing from a cottage industry driven primarily by "golden ear" design decisions based on trial and error to one mostly driven by actual science and engineering. The transition is not yet complete, but most contemporary speakers are cleaner and more accurate by orders of magnitude than those of yesteryear.

 

[wwenze]

I don't use streaming platforms and am still using files and folders. Am I boomer?

 

[Cwopete5]

Were there any moments that stood out to you? Anything that blew you away the first time you heard it?

Yes, happened recently when I first listened to the remake of the classic 1985 Musical Fidelity A1 Class A Integrated Amplifier. I had forgotten how smooth and relaxed old school audio gear sounded.

 

[gtgray]

Late 70s for audio I was riding pretty high. All my high frequency hearing was intact. I had a Pioneer SX-1250 Stereo Receiver hooked to ESS Amt Towers dont remember the model number. They had smaller Heils at the top. Feeding it was an upper-end Garrard turntable with Shure V15 Type III. I wish I had those pieces today. It got loud. My wife was quite ill a few years later and well you know sh&t happens.

 

[Music1969]

The improvements to fidelity in my 36 years have seemed comparatively iterative.

you need to start playing with the state of the art in digital room correction

This is a game changer

 

[Chrispy]

As a millennial, I feel like there hasn't really been any massive improvements in fidelity in my lifetime.

CDs had already been invented when I was born, so unless you're an audiophile, redbook has been as good as it gets for as long as I've been alive.
In fact, at some point, mainstream audio quality got worse, when CDs gave way to 128kbps mp3s etc. Thankfully, we recovered when Internet speeds got faster and storage got cheaper.

Before anyone jumps on me for my first sentence: I don't want to diminish how great it is that you can buy excellent IEMs from Amazon for $25. I do appreciate that audio equipment has gotten better and generally cheaper in my lifetime, but:

I'm fascinated to know what it like to go from 78s to 45s and 33 1/3s, mono to stereo, tubes to solid state, analogue to digital.
The improvements to fidelity in my 36 years have seemed comparatively iterative.

Were there any moments that stood out to you? Anything that blew you away the first time you heard it?

You bettah off. I grew up with vinyl, some tape (cassette). So glad when CDs came about, and guess my big moment was my first cd player and disk. A bit better when you could easily use a computer for digital files. Streaming I prefer better than 128 but depends what you're playing it on as to how much it matters but I just generally still use streaming for exploration or laziness, still prefer to collect. If I do stream 256 and above especially with the better codecs is just fine.

I still have all my vinyl and a tt I've had for 40 years now. I just don't use it much but do have some vinyl I don't have digital versions of, and sometimes just for nostalgia. It's not evil, just the surface noise and inconvenience.

 

[sejarzo]

In 1976, you'd have often found me sitting in my dorm room at Purdue, drinking a Little Kings Cream Ale, listening to Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown" on my Phillips GA-212/ADC XLM, JE Sugden amps and JansZen Z412HP speakers and thinking "damn, this sounds fantastic!"

No way would I have believed anyone who told me then that another 50 years later, that the sound from my first "real stereo system" was pretty much sh*t compared to that from a pair of $13 Truthear Gate IEMs connected to a little computer that everyone carried, with a little plastic chip only as big as my thumbnail that held all of my music collection at full resolution.

I had decided to get into classical music around then, but the quality of virtually every domestic pressing was so crappy that I soon gave up. Philips or DG pressings were usually better but more expensive. There were even times when I ended up with LPs that didn't have the hole properly centered.

Probably just like many others here in a similar age cohort, I bought the Yamaha CD-X1 as soon as it was available, and that changed everything as far as I am concerned.

 

[Anton S]

Probably just like many others here in a similar age cohort, I bought the Yamaha CD-X1 as soon as it was available, and that changed everything as far as I am concerned.

My first player (NEC CD-803) predated the CD-X1 by several months. It was so expensive that I wouldn't have bought it if accommodation pricing directly from the company hadn't been an option. (Factory-direct accommodation pricing from most manufacturers back then was half of MSRP. No idea what it is now.) The operation of its motorized front door was slow as Christmas, but it sounded great.

 

[MaxBuck]

... with cheap power, we lost dynamics. We also lost timbre.

Not sure if serious.

 

[krabapple]

I listen to a lot of older (1950s/60s) classical recordings. I'm finding that their "hi-rez" remasters on Tidal, for the most part, use a fair amount of digital delay/reverb to cover up the tears in the musical fabric. Pretty sounding but not accurate.

That's extraordinary if true. I've never heard of remasters adding 'digital delay and reverb*' to cover up anything, though I haven't bought very many classical music remasters.

Can you give a clear example?


*noise reduction, yes; dynamic range compression, yes; re-EQ, yes. I've heard all those for sure on remasters. But adding 'delay and reverb', I haven't heard of that being done since the days of LP.

 

[krabapple]

Mostly better and less expensive but with cheap power, we lost dynamics. We also lost timbre.

Huh? 'Cheap power' does that how?

 

[krabapple]

I think it's pointless to discuss this, because it's the difference between better and useful.
Do you need better data, higher Sinad, more power or is it completely sufficient if all components exceed the transparency threshold by 1db?
I think that's a question that only everyone can answer for themselves.

Abstracting from this, it is common to describe something with better values as better. I don't know how I could formulate it differently.

Well, no.

If a TV can output ultraviolet, how does that make it 'better' than one that already does a top-flight job at outputting the visible spectrum?

 

[Robin L]

That's extraordinary if true. I've never heard of remasters adding 'digital delay and reverb*' to cover up anything, though I haven't bought very many classical music remasters.

Can you give a clear example?


*noise reduction, yes; dynamic range compression, yes; re-EQ, yes. I've heard all those for sure on remasters. But adding 'delay and reverb', I haven't heard of that being done since the days of LP.

Szell's Cleveland recordings (the originals were comparatively "dry"), the 1960s HvK/Berlin Phil Beethoven cycle. I've owned both multiple times in different LP and CD masterings. Szell's recordings seem to have had digital delay added little by little over time beginning with the "Essential Classics" series. The "Beethoven Overtures" album has lots of reverb compared to the originals. The first time I heard the Karajan Beethoven cycle with additional reverb was with the Tidal Hi-Rez stream posted. I gave my CDs away after hearing the Tidal remaster. The first Leonard Bernstein Mahler cycle for Columbia famously was remastered using a Hi-Rez format, including a small amount of reverb, but the stream offered by Tidal is Redbook. However, that remastering was intended for SACD.

George Szell - Szell Conducts Beethoven Overtures ((Remastered))

Listen to Szell Conducts Beethoven Overtures ((Remastered)) on TIDAL

tidal.com

Berliner Philharmoniker & Herbert von Karajan - Beethoven: 9 Symphonies

Listen to Beethoven: 9 Symphonies on TIDAL

tidal.com

George Szell & The Cleveland Orchestra - Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 "Eroica" ((Remastered))

Listen to Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 "Eroica" ((Remastered)) on TIDAL

tidal.com

Leonard Bernstein & New York Philharmonic Orchestra - Leonard Bernstein: The Complete Mahler Symphonies

Listen to Leonard Bernstein: The Complete Mahler Symphonies on TIDAL

tidal.com

I've been collecting Classical recordings (including remasters) since 1969. I also made a lot of recordings of classical music. I'll bet you'd be surprised at how many classical releases have additional reverb added in postproduction.

 

[sam_adams]

"What was it like to live through major improvements in audio fidelity?"